


What's Bent, What's Broken

by crackedshades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Civil War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:03:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6780910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackedshades/pseuds/crackedshades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You knew where the Hulk was? This whole time?” </p><p>“I did not know where ‘the Hulk’ was. I knew where Bruce was, and I left him out of our baby fight because I--” Tony breaks off, shooting a look over his shoulder. “Value his continued friendship.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vellev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vellev/gifts).



> IM3 didn't happen. For that matter, IM2 only sort of happened. Neither of the Hulk movies happened. The last fifteen minutes of Civil War are right out.

“Jesus Christ, you won and this is what you do with it?” Tony’s voice is tinny through the flip phone, but Steve can picture his incredulous squint down to the crow’s feet. He’s probably pacing around the compound, inflicting his yelling on the innocent. The thought almost makes him smile, but he’s spent the last three days staring consumptively out the window and trying not to think about the way Bucky braced himself for freezing, and his smiling muscles have atrophied.

“Hellooo? Are you being a drama queen right now? Writing in your diary? Poe would weep, all right, there you go, you’re validated. Boo hoo. Give me 48 hours, I’ll fix this.” There’s some muffled talking as someone tells Tony off. That does make Steve smile. “I’ve got Ross on hold, I’ve gotta go.”

48 hours later, he’s expecting a bouquet, or a nice card, or an expensive watch. Apology-once-removed gestures of classic Tony Stark sentiment. What he’s not expecting is for the most ostentatious jet he’s ever seen to land in front of Central Wakanda Hospital, and for Tony himself to come out, practically vibrating with caffeine and glee. Behind him, much more calmly, is Bruce Banner, and while Steve would love to be grateful, he can’t help but stick his foot in it.

“You _knew_ where the Hulk was? This whole time?”

“I did not know where ‘the Hulk’ was. I knew where Bruce was, and I left him out of our baby fight because I--” Tony breaks off, shooting a look over his shoulder. “Value his continued friendship.”

Bruce shuffles a little bit. There’s something familiar about this situation, but Steve’s brain only supplies the words ‘fondue’ and ‘closet.’ He hasn’t slept in a while.

A long moment passes where it’s Steve and Bruce looking uncomfortable, and Tony looking way too comfortable.

“So,” says Bruce. “Tony said I need to ‘work my soft, cuddly magic.’”

“Soft, cuddly doctor magic. And you, you find this guy frozen and you stick him back on ice? What’s the deal there? You forget you’re supposed to be the good guy?”

Thawing Barnes out is surprisingly painless. He's confused, understandably, and even though Steve logically knows that Banner is a doctor, all Steve wants to do is push past him and pull Bucky into his arms. Tony fixes him with a look when he steps forward, but what really stops him is the familiar muscle of Bucky’s jaw working as he tries to make sense of the faces before him.

“What year is it?” His voice is hoarse. Banner eyes the foggy surface of his metal shoulder and writes ‘frostbite?’ on a memo pad in neat, equidistant capitals.

“It’s still 2016. About a week after you went on ice,” Steve says, trying to be helpful.

“Six days, actually. Hi, Tony Stark, we’ve met. You tried to kill me. Several times. This is the lovely and long-suffering Dr. Banner, and he’s here to--”

“No doctors.” Bucky looks about ready to rip the reactor out of Tony’s chest again, never mind that there’s no suit in sight.

“Pardon?”

“No more doctors.”

“I’m not that kind of doctor,” says Banner. Calmly. Everything he does, he does calmly. “Nuclear physics. Among other things. I know how you must feel,” he says, with that whole, open earnestness that gives even Steve pause. “You’ve been through a lot, and you have memories of doing terrible things, and it’s very easy to blame yourself.”

Bucky’s glare lessens a few daggers, and his shoulders sag.

“I’m here to help you. That means if there’s anything you’re uncomfortable with, or something that you feel might help you, I’ll make that my priority.”

“Also,” Tony clears his throat from the far wall. “We need to talk about your super cool arm.”

“My arm is gone,” Bucky says, speaking slowly like maybe Stark hit his head in the last six days. “You can tell, ‘cause my shoulder stops right here.”

“Nah, that was your lame arm. I’m going to hook you up with a super cool arm that doesn’t weigh a hundred and thirty pounds, and doesn’t give you pneumonia--” Bruce looks at Tony funny. “--yes, pneumonia, you hear that wheeze?-- because it’s too heavy for your lungs to expand properly. And some idiot put you on ice again.”

Bucky opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, then opens it again. “Steve.”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. You used to. Your breathing.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s heart feels so big it’s going to crack a rib. He waits for Bucky to remember something else, but he just stares. Five seconds pass, then ten. Tony waves a hand in front of Bucky’s face. Bruce writes something else down. Steve feels cold all over again.

“I space out sometimes.”

 _Jesus, Your array of miracles._ He’s alright.

“Hey, listen, this is a lot to deal with right now, and maybe the two of you should give him some space. How’s that sound, Buck? Maybe get you a shower first, some proper clothes?”

“Absence seizure,” says Bruce, ignoring him.

“I put me on ice again,” says Bucky, ignoring the both of them.

“Your judgment was impaired,” says Tony, ignoring Steve but not even in Banner’s quiet, innocuous way. “You admitted to being brainwashed.” He checks his watch, but really it’s to show off his very expensive watch to a room full of people that don’t care. “Six days ago. You don’t think _maybe_ putting yourself in max-sec ‘in case of emergency’ is a little convenient?”

“What?”

Suddenly, Tony has everyone’s attention. He preens. “And, fine, supposing all this _was_ your master plan, congratulations. You’ve succeeded. In giving yourself pneumonia. Just between you and me, I’d rather blame Rover.”

“I’m not _impaired_ ,” says Bucky, in a tone of voice threatening enough to make Bruce throw Tony a please-god-shut-up look. “I remember everything.”

To his credit, Tony shuts up. Steve takes a leaf from his insufferably analytical book and hypothesizes it’s because Bruce’s hand has migrated ominously to the small of his back.

“Some space sounds like a good idea,” says Bruce, and then something about getting Bucky clean and dressed and fed.

“It’s only a good idea when _he_ says it,” Steve mutters under his breath as he leaves.

“Because he’s a doctor, and you’re a golden retriever with a spunky sidekick in a Pixar movie. Cool it with the persecution complex. It makes you look fat.”

Steve is all pent-up stress with nowhere to go, and while he’s not willing to sink so low as to snap at Bruce, Tony is fair game. “You don’t think he’s had enough of hospitals in the last seventy years?”

“Oh, you know better than the triple Ph.D.”

“I know better because I’m his friend!”

“And the power of love is gonna conquer pneumonia, seizures and brainwashing,” spits Tony. “I’m going back to Air Force Fun.”

Something gives Steve the sense he’s not invited. That’s fine. He’s got a life outside of Bucky.

Hah.

Central Wakanda is a big place. He’ll find something to do.

“Are you alright? I heard you slip.” Bucky can just picture Dr. Banner wringing his hands. The semitransparent hospital shower curtain blurs Banner into a dark blob, but Bucky hears the worry in his voice anyway. It’s weird, being worried about.

“I’m fine.” From inside the shower, he lets loose with muffled cursing and the sound of plastic bottles being righted. “Do you think I haven’t showered in two years? Because I have,” he adds, after a beat of silence. “I just can’t do it with you breathing down my neck.”

“Just for now, until we know whether you’ll be affected by antiepileptics.”

He curses some more, but Bruce can’t recognize the language.

“Is the soap okay? We can find a specific brand at the store if you’d like, the stuff the hospital gives out isn’t ideal. Especially not for people with actual hair.”

“Could you quit fussing?”

“Yes. Sorry. My bad.”

“Quit that.”

“Quit what?”

Bucky peers around the curtain, frowning. “Being so goddamn _nice_. What do you want?” He’s heard of this guy, at least through osmosis. Rather, he’s heard of the giant green thing capable of withstanding a nuclear blast. He’s East Coast born and raised; ‘nice’ makes his skin crawl like someone’s going to knife him in an alley and sell his organs.

“I don’t-- I mean, I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me, but beyond that--”

His frown deepens. “ _That_. Quit that.”

“Oh. Okay.” Bruce stays quiet for a minute after that, letting Bucky shower in whatever peace he can muster. Then, just when Bucky thinks he’s been left alone for good, he speaks back up. “It’s funny. You calling me nice when you’re friends with Captain America. He’s so nice, it’s a little weird.”

Bucky doesn’t answer for a long time, putting his training to work. Looking for weak points. Anything to get ten minutes alone in the hot water. “So, you and Stark, huh? How’s that work? You have to gag him to get a word in edgewise?”

“We’re not together,” says Bruce, far too quickly.

“Uh-huh.” There’s another silence, but this time it’s Bucky that can’t let it be. “What the hell was that, that move with your hand on him? Get Hydra’s weapons techs on that, you’ll have some unstoppable crowd control. Either you’re keeping him locked up in your basement, or there’s something there.”

Only when he comes out does he realize he’s been talking to an empty room.

Tony’s jet is impressive in its dedication to being massive. Bruce has been on the helicarrier, and gotten lost on the helicarrier, but at least SHIELD had the decency to include convenient signs and make it very hard to get lost. Tony’s jet, apart from its massive scale, has big open spaces rather than cramped aisles, and a whole workroom where an ordinary plane might keep the luggage. Bruce has, more than once, brought up the possibility of a robotics accident bringing the whole plane down, and been dutifully brushed away every time.

Either way, it’s a marvel of modern aeronautics. And it has a wet bar.

No. Drinks are a bad plan. He needs to be making this easier for Tony, not adding new temptations to dodge at every turn. He takes a deep breath, collects himself, and asks Friday to pull up his top ten recipes. There is something for everyone, which is an upside. A fully stocked kitchen for him, a wet bar for Tony. He wonders if there's even a weight room for Steve there. A shooting range for Clint? The possibilities are endless.

Tony appears, tired but blessedly sober, when the smell of curry is strong enough to fill this room and the next. “You’re mad.”

“Not at you.”

“Not what I said. Why would you be mad at me? I’m a delight. I’m an _altruist_.”

“Why are you doing this?” Bruce leans low to smell the simmering pot. He still has half a can of tomato puree, and is trying to decide whether he should add more of that or more coconut milk.

“I said I was an altruist not half a second ago,” Tony tosses back, and Bruce admires just how good he is at evading questions.

Bruce waits.

“That smells good. Have you tried it? It smells great.”

Bruce waits.

“Jeez, I don’t know. Can you turn the doctor thing off?”

Bruce holds a tablespoon of chili paste threateningly over the curry.

“Don’t ruin it. Come on.” Tony sits down, taking up the whole loveseat with his legs. “I should have listened in the first place. I’m not saying I was wrong, just that I may have been. Ahem. Less right. Slightly.”

That’s leaps and bounds of progress for Tony Stark, so Bruce puts the chili paste away. And waits.

“I’m just trying to make things right, and I would appreciate you not dissecting it into some big guilt-complex thing like always.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“I’m going to spit in your curry.”

Bruce waits.

“I’m trying to make things right,” Tony repeats, but he doesn’t sound any more convinced.

“With Barnes?”

Tony waits. With Steve, then.

The burner clicks off.

This is more of Tony thinking he still needs to buy his friends. This is Tony thinking he needs to buy Steve back by presenting him with his brainwashed squid nazi best friend.

Tony is still waiting on the couch, like maybe Bruce won’t put it together. To his credit, he pretends not to. He presses a bowl of bright red curry into Tony’s hands, and takes one for himself.

“I’m not sure you’re going about it the right way.”

“Your comments have been noted,” says Tony, and then, “This is really good.”

Bruce doesn’t press the issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prayer Steve starts is [a prayer for miracles](http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/english/p00519.htm), but I am as far from Catholic as one can get while subscribing to the Abrahamic God, so you'll have to forgive me if I picked the wrong prayer.
> 
> The curry scene is partly because Bruce spent so much time in India, partly because the paprikash scene was adorable until Vision ruined it, and partly because I need the world to know exactly how little Tony Stark can handle spicy foods. [This](http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Sri-Lankan-Egg-Curry-1619533) is the curry recipe I had in mind.
> 
> Air Force Fun, for my non-American readers, is a reference to [Air Force One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Whoa, whoa, whoa, _whoa._ Pump the brakes. Who invited Russia’s Greatest Love Machine?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To them that appreciate my "sense" of "humor," you may be pleased to note that I do keep a running list of Tony Stark's Names to Call the Winter Soldier. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Steve is vindicated. 

It takes a couple days, during which he sleeps on a plasticky hospital couch half his size so Bucky doesn’t feel so overwhelmingly alone, but eventually, Banner comes to see sense. Anyone would, the way he’s been dropping hints. Banner and Stark are a different species, though. They don’t speak ‘subtlety.’ 

He's been saying, repeatedly and in no uncertain terms, that a hospital in a foreign nation isn't the best place for Bucky. That even if Brooklyn isn't an option, what he needs is a familiar place with familiar people. 

“Familiar people” here meaning “Steve.” 

What he really needs, more than talk therapy and twenty different kinds of pills, is a stable living environment and a home-cooked meal. He’s seen what shell-shock can do to soldiers. Dumping them in the psych ward, though? That’s a special kind of evil Steve can’t stomach. 

So he does his best to make the hospital seem homey. Buck can’t eat half the crap they’re throwing at him. He vomits a couple of times a day, which is a weird kind of familiar when Steve remembers the bitter-pill taste of his own sick, and what a trooper old-Bucky was taking care of him. New-Bucky doesn’t seem half so grateful, preferring to ignore the fact that he’s capable of illness entirely. 

He needs time. And, like Steve has been saying,  _ to not rot away in a hospital. _

That’s why, when Bruce takes Steve off to the side, he’s all ready to turn up the charm and hit him with the nicest ‘I told you so’ speech since the 1940s. 

“I think James may have brain damage.”

“I-- What?” Steve goes weak in the knees. Bucky isn’t brain-damaged. Homeless guys shouting at nothing on the street, they’re brain-damaged. Guys that climb onto a roof and fall off, they get brain damage. Brain damage happens to other people. 

“...not sure, given his age and his condition, that it’s something the serum can take care of.” 

He’s been sleeping on plastic for days for this. Bucky isn’t brain-damaged. Bucky remembers him. Bucky’s been listening to his war stories the past three nights, and laughing at right places. That’s not brain-damaged behavior. 

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong?” Bruce raises his eyebrows slightly, which looks like cartoonish surprise on his normally impassive features. 

“He’s remembering things. All the way back, before the war. That’s progress. If he had brain damage, he wouldn’t be doing so well. He’d be, I don’t know, drooling on the sheets! He walked all the way downtown and back yesterday, he didn’t even need a map.” 

Bruce bites back the response that no one uses maps anymore, and counts backwards from ten, picturing serene alpine landscapes. “We have no way of knowing how many times they wiped him. That’s a process designed specifically for burning portions of his brain away, I doubt it’s easily reversible.” Or reversible at all, but he doesn’t mention that. 

“Aren’t there... Brain transplants? It’s 2016,” Steve says, a note of desperation entering his voice, “There has to be a way.” He’s slipping into his Captain America voice, if that’s even his title anymore. By now, he’s probably been officially stripped of his medals. Mr. America has a ring to it, he guesses. 

Bruce hasn’t stopped reading off his tablet, and Steve can’t help but note that it’s Tony’s tech. Somehow, God grants him the strength to resist breaking it in half. “Water expands when it’s frozen, and the brain is almost three-quarters water, cerebrospinal fluid is nearly all water. His body has been trying to compensate for that kind of trauma every time he’s unfrozen for the last seventy years.” Bruce purses his lips like he’s about to drop another bomb, like maybe now Bucky has cancer, or polio, or TB. 

He opens his mouth to say something else, but Steve jerks his chin over Bruce’s shoulder, and now Bruce is surrounded by super-soldiers. 

_ Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one two three four five six seven eight nine ten nine eight…  _ Breathe in. Breathe out. Bruce kicks himself for forgetting about super hearing. He sidesteps neatly, so points A, B and C form a triangle rather than a line. It does wonders for his blood pressure. 

“Supposing I had it. Brain damage. What do I do about it.” There’s something  _ wrong _ in the way he speaks. The tone of his voice never changes, even when he’s asking a question. It just sounds flat. It’s nothing like the laughing Bucky from their long nights up telling war stories. It’s like someone scooped that Bucky out of him, and left only the outside.

“Avoid neurological fatigue. Remain in the hospital--” 

“No.” Both of them, at once.  _ Did they practice that? _

“--until I can evaluate your condition more thoroughly.” 

_ “No. _ ” It’s just Steve this time. 

Bruce counts to ten very slowly and does not allow himself to think about what Steve Rogers would look like as a thin paste on the wall. 

“I understand your concerns,” he lies, shutting up the part of him that wants to say Steve barely had a high-school education in the 1930s and Bruce has three doctorates. “But this is about the degree of stress James can handle.”

“I can handle it.”

“He can handle it.” 

“And the degree of stress  _ I _ can handle.” Count to ten. Ignore Barnes’ glare. Ignore Steve’s disapproving Captain America frown. “You are both internationally wanted criminals. I am an internationally wanted criminal. Tony is landing his name on all sorts of lists, just talking to any of us. Where do you suggest we put a dangerous, unstable terrorist, except for a hospital?” 

Steve looks to be thinking about it. 

“Big plane right outside,” says Barnes.

That could work.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,  _ whoa. _ Pump the brakes. Who invited Russia’s Greatest Love Machine?”

Steve crosses his arms. His position isn’t quite parade rest, but it’s damn close enough to put Bruce even further on edge. “This is his party, isn’t it?”

“That’s his party, in there,” Tony says, pointing back the way they came. “This is my party.” 

Steve and Tony glare at each other for a solid fifteen seconds. Steve wins. 

“Fine. Don’t touch anything.” 

“Fine.”

Steve attempts to reignite the magic with another glare, but Tony’s already distracted. “What am I dealing with? Frostbite? Freezer burn? Gnarly. Whose idea was that, by the way? Sticking the guy with the metal arm on ice. That’s Soviet engineering, for you. This here, this is the Trabi of supersoldiers. Take him out for a spin and the bumper falls off.” 

He makes a room smaller just by being in it: Air Force Fun isn’t cramped by any means, but Tony manages to take the whole place up anyway. If anyone else wants to get a word in edgewise, they have to yell. 

“Shirt off, IcyHot, let me see the damage. You can too, if you’re feeling left out.” he adds, leering vaguely in the direction of Steve and Bruce. “You  _ absolutely  _ can, Magic Mike. Shit, is that after your time? How about Rudy Valentino?” 

There’s no stopping the trainwreck that is Tony. His shirt comes off while he’s talking, and joins the last three days’ clothes over the back of the couch.  _ This plane _ , Steve reflects briefly,  _ has a couch.  _ The reactor is glowing in Tony’s chest, electric blue in the warm yellow light. 

And then Tony is over the back of the couch, and Bucky is trying to rip the thing out of his chest. 

How Banner stays calm in situations like these, Steve will never know.

“I’m fine,” comes Tony’s slightly strained voice over the back of the couch. “We’re good!” 

Without the metal arm, Bucky is slightly less fatal; the fact remains, however, that he is six foot two, conservatively, and well over two hundred pounds, while Tony is a head shorter and used to double his weight in metal wrapped around him. 

“Okay,” he says, a note of panic entering his voice when Bucky doesn’t come to his senses in five seconds. “Not fine. Not fine!” 

Even without the metal arm, Buck’s heavy and he fights like hell when Steve tries to separate the two of them. He’s shouting something in Russian, which no one understands. Something about  _ Декабрь  _ and  _ доза  _ and  _ внутривенная _ and, in clear English,  _ target _ . Even to Steve’s biased estimation, he looks about ready to rip the reactor out through Tony’s spine, all Mortal Kombat. 

What? He did a lot of catching up. 

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that the four of them are in Tony’s jet, which is not the best place for certain persons to be getting stressed out, whether that means Russian shouting or turning into the Jolly Green Giant. So Steve does the sensible thing. 

He hauls off and punches Buck in the face.

Bruce politely excuses himself, looking both metaphorically and literally green around the gills. 

“So,” says Tony finally. 

“So.” 

“I don’t think your boyfriend likes me.”

“He’s not--” 

“And after all the trouble I went to. I’ve been unbelievably cool about the whole killing-my-mom thing, I think that’s very big of me.” 

“He has  _ problems. _ ” 

“Fuck  _ that _ noise, we all have problems. I don’t have the facilities to keep  _ his _ problems away from my life support.” He’s recovered enough to fear for his life, which is a good sign. 

“Oh, and Banner, you do?” 

“Banner isn’t liable to gut me because I’ve got a lightbulb in my chest.” 

Tony tries to get up on his own, because he’s an idiot. Steve helps him up, because he’s the bigger person. It doesn’t work very well, and they both end up on the couch in varying states of dishevelment. There’s a muscle working in Tony’s jaw, and he’s sporting that slightly glassy look that makes him look his age and reminds Steve he’s a regular person with a debilitating heart condition, and  _ where the hell does he fit in with all these superheroes? _

Then it’s gone, presumably because Steve got caught looking. 

“Rambo seriously needs some ground rules.” 

Steve laughs before he’s entirely sure whether that’s supposed to be funny or not, and then they’re both laughing. 

“We should probably get Buck up off the floor before he comes to.” 

“I swear to God, if he breaks my plane. Jesus. The fuck did they have him on, horse meth?” He rubs at the reactor again, at a spot on the side where Bucky’s short nail caught and left him with a little scratch. 

“That’s my secret, didn’t you know? Horse meth. Please don’t tell Fox News I made that joke,” Steve snorts, kneeling to heave an unconscious Bucky over his shoulders like a sack of flour. “What’s your contingency plan if Banner can’t take the heat?” 

“Drop him at 39,000 feet, and bring roses and chocolate when I pick him up.” The answer comes so quickly he almost thinks Tony’s joking. “What’s yours for Barnes?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Russia's Greatest Love Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmkySNDX4dU). [IcyHot](http://www.icyhot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/balm_product_big.png). The [Trabant](http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658533_1658030,00.html) (Trabi). [Magic Mike](http://goramediow.pl/images/Nowosci/Film/2015.10.12/Magic-Mike-Movie-Poster.jpg). 
> 
> Up next: Dental hygiene. No, really.


End file.
